At Ascension Hospital, I parked and sat in the back of the Jeep, observing the ambulance bay through the tinted rear window. The morning had been surprisingly fresh, but now that the sun had fully risen, it suffused the smoke and choked the day. Yet even through the haze, across the parking lot I could see the purple truck of Common Dreams, A RUBICON TECH INITIATIVE. I kept the binoculars trained.

It was Friday. Baker Watt had said the trial was ending, and my hope was that, if Dr. Kriss hadn’t discharged the final subjects yet, today was her last chance. But the truck just sat there. At one point a shadow flickered over me, and I saw the parking inspector lean over the hood of the Jeep. He didn’t notice me as he checked the ticket on the dash and moved on. The next few hours were broken only by the medevac helicopter as it lowered to the landing pad on the roof of the hospital before taking flight again. Airlifts, I assumed, from the burn areas.

It was about noon when a woman finally entered the ambulance bay in the purple polo of Common Dreams. She swung the back door of the truck open and began emptying out surgical masks, intubation kits, defibrillators. No bags of white blood.

The binoculars were sharp. I could see the kanji tattooed on her nape and the dandruff in the part of her hair, which she wore short and bleached and gelled back. I wondered if this was the paramedic who’d picked the glass from my cheek when I crashed, and considered approaching her. I’d brought along copies of the Zeke photos. I could confront her with them. But the paramedic wasn’t important, she was just cleaning out the truck. I had to stay patient.

When she’d finished the job, I saw her greet someone. Focusing the binoculars, I realized that I was looking at the back of a head. It wasn’t Dr. Kriss.

“Turn around,” I said.

As the man talked to the paramedic, she beamed, as if he was being more and more complimentary, and when he presented her with a small bottle of sparkling wine, she put her hands to her pruning chin. I could read her lips.

“Thank you,” she was saying.

“Turn around.”

“Thank you.”

He wrangled her into a hug, looked out toward the lot, and I had a perfect view. Crumpled lips, purple as liver, a broken-looking nose—I cried out so loudly I could’ve given myself away.

It was him, Pavel Firea, the man from the house above the highway, the ghost in my room, observing me, mingling with my dreams—alive.